My focus has always (and will always) be more on the photography side than post-processing, but I've always been frustrated by my lack of knowledge and skill when I'm working with my photos. Like just about every amateur photographer, I'm forced to learn and do the retouching/editing myself.

I use Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5, and I'm relatively comfortable in Lightroom and know about enough with Photoshop to do some basic cloning/healing and awful dodging and burning. I'm also stuck on a Lenovo Thinkpad E420 laptop with a matte screen, but that's not going to change for a while.

How can I learn more in some sort of meaningful way rather than learning totally scattered bits (and some much better than others) from random online tutorials and YouTube videos? How have all of you learned and developed your skills?

honestly it just takes practice. i've been using photoshop off and on for about 8 years now and i'm still learning new things and new techniques for editing photos.

youtube video's and tutorials help alot if your trying to do something specific and eventually they all kinda blend together. i suggest taking some photo's and just play around with the settings and filters.

set a goal, i.e. i want to be able to retouch glamour. then find the techniques you want to learn, that are relevant to your style and those you personally find appealing.

it's really a taste, more than a technique thing. while most people think of retouching as a repair operation that fixes their otherwise broken photos, it is actually the opposite. there are no absolutes, and more retouching isn't necessarily better for your picture. slapping every available technique onto your photo isn't going to improve it.

also, looking at your photos this way will help you fix a lot of things in camera next time round. the key is to pre-visualize your work.

Also, a book specifically about retouching that I have read is "Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers Using Photoshop by Scott Kelby." It's easy to learn from and worth the money. You will always refer back to it.

chasecaleb wrote: My focus has always (and will always) be more on the photography side than post-processing, but I've always been frustrated by my lack of knowledge and skill when I'm working with my photos. Like just about every amateur photographer, I'm forced to learn and do the retouching/editing myself.

I use Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5, and I'm relatively comfortable in Lightroom and know about enough with Photoshop to do some basic cloning/healing and awful dodging and burning. I'm also stuck on a Lenovo Thinkpad E420 laptop with a matte screen, but that's not going to change for a while.

How can I learn more in some sort of meaningful way rather than learning totally scattered bits (and some much better than others) from random online tutorials and YouTube videos? How have all of you learned and developed your skills?

You can't always buy , sometimes you have to study and learn.. And yes it usually takes time.. I have been at it for 60+ years, and learn every day...

It has a large selection of online tutorials arranged by category and topic, making it very easy to use either as a reference or as a general learning tool. I've used it successfully for several years.

I would say set a goal on what you would like to accomplish and build up from there. If your unsure where to start, I would say focus on tutorials that may benefit towards the type of photography you do. I would suggest not to get caught up with 'step by step' approach, inputing exact numbers, as every photo is unique. First, I would understand the tools, methods and approach within every tutorial and develop a sense of 'vocabulary' for retouching. Once your comfortable, then you can look at tutorials for different techniques to tweak your 'current' workflow.

There are plenty of resources online to get you going with retouching. Honestly you'll learn and accomplish more by teaching and finding the resources yourself than going to a class or school. You must have the motivation to do it and always practice, practice practice. And then experiment. Fail and understand what you did wrong, to take note for future editing.

But one advice would be to not make drastic modifications while editing. Minimal changes are key and building up within your photo will make a drastic change in the end.

It has a large selection of online tutorials arranged by category and topic, making it very easy to use either as a reference or as a general learning tool. I've used it successfully for several years.

one more thing is don't give up. just because the results aren't what you were expecting right off the bat, doesn't mean your doing it wrong. It just might be that your adding too much on one adjustment.

Digital Kythe Image wrote: I would say set a goal on what you would like to accomplish and build up from there. If your unsure where to start, I would say focus on tutorials that may benefit towards the type of photography you do. I would suggest not to get caught up with 'step by step' approach, inputing exact numbers, as every photo is unique. First, I would understand the tools, methods and approach within every tutorial and develop a sense of 'vocabulary' for retouching. Once your comfortable, then you can look at tutorials for different techniques to tweak your 'current' workflow.

There are plenty of resources online to get you going with retouching. Honestly you'll learn and accomplish more by teaching and finding the resources yourself than going to a class or school. You must have the motivation to do it and always practice, practice practice. And then experiment. Fail and understand what you did wrong, to take note for future editing.

But one advice would be to not make drastic modifications while editing. Minimal changes are key and building up within your photo will make a drastic change in the end.

Hope this gives you some insight!

DK

So many really good points, and I sure do agree with the last one. I sure don't shoot on film in order to airbrush it to death!

Along with what you mentioned about setting a goal, I've always found it useful to not only set a long-term goal but also focus on just one aspect at a time. Right now there's a few things about the colors (and lack of consistency of them) that I've been getting that's been driving me crazy. Half of that's my scanning workflow, which I think I've solved for the future, and the other half is what I'm going to focus on over the next month or so.

Side note: scanning film yourself can be ridiculously confusing, and you would think it's some sort of black magic or voodoo from researching it online. There's so much ridiculous information about it online that I've just had to learn the hard way, guided along by way-too-technical papers... half the time in foreign languages. If anyone gets lost trying to figure it out, let me know and I'll see if I can shed some light.

Peano wrote: I suspect that this is your biggest barrier to learning. Maybe you can discover a different way of looking at retouching/editing -- a way that reflects and extends the way you experience photography.

+1...as I started out using PS I was very reluctant...didn't like it at all....Now I am very comfortable with it and learn new T&T's every day.
When you are " forced"...there is no motivation so the learningcurve will be steep.

I am very surprised about Charlie's remark Nathalia's DVD is a waste.....I think she is one of the major contributors for learning to use PS for skinretouching.
C'mon Charlie, show your work and let's see.

I can definately recommend the DVD from Gry Garness and Krunoslav Stifer....indepth retouching.

You also have to take into account what you want to learn, why is lightroom feeling limited to you? I know of a photographer that I admire that uses mostly lightroom for his model work sometimes he does a quick cleaning on the face with the healing brush and that's about it. So depending on what you feel weak about in what you want to do in your images then you can focus a bit better on where to start.

I've seen the 3 dvd tutorials they've mentioned here, Natalia's, Kuronslav's (sorry if I misspelled) and Gry Garnes'... I would recommend all of them if you're interested in high end retouch that has to do with models, Natalia's talks about a few areas of retouch (from raw adjustments to background then to skin then eyes and lastly hair) its in depth enough that if you know your way you can get better and pick lots of tips just watching the way she works in the images, Kuronslav's dvd is basically an in depth look on dodge and burn and goes from the general to the details this one can help allot if you're still dumbfounded by dodge & burn, Gry Garnes' DVD is something like Natalia's but talks about other areas (color correcting, body manipulation) and also talks about the generalities of getting a retouched image ready for the client. These 3 dvd's I would recommend if you're medium to advanced in photoshop knowledge.

For starting Lynda.com is a great place, most of Chris Orwig's tutorials are very good (even if they're not about portrait retouching) they can help you think outside the box when it comes to photoshop, don't know if I've seen all of his tutorials on portrait retouching but his are focused less on what I would call High end look, they do work but some stuff is better done on the 3 dvd's I talked about earlier.

I would also recommend browsing the tutorials on retouchpro.com and if you have the patience look in the forums (its been ages since I've been there, but it was a good base).